


Small Things

by MundaneChampagne



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Drabble, Drabble Collection, Fears of the Unknown, Gen, Plague
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 06:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6108652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MundaneChampagne/pseuds/MundaneChampagne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of very short pieces about Dunwall and the people who have lived there over the ages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Letter (from long ago)

_Dear Father,_

_Thank you very much for the gift. It is beautiful, and I have gotten many compliments when I wear it. I shall treasure it always._

_I have not been feeling well as of late. My sleep is troubled, and my days are restless. Strange dreams plague me, of ancient and terrible things buried here under our own city. I went to the Abbey yesterday, seeking guidance. The Overseers instructed me to fast, and remember the Seventh Stricture. I have tried hard. I set a candle by my bed last night and tried to focus only on the flicker of the flame. It was no use. My dreams were dark and worrisome as always. I am much afeared that the Outsider has taken me._

_I shall endeavor to keep striving against the darkness. When I am sad or frightened, I look at your necklace and run my hands over the swirls of the seashell. It reminds me that beautiful things can result from the terrors of something vast and unknowable like the sea._

_I count the days until you return from Karnaca._

_Love always,_

_Your daughter Johanna_


	2. The man who tends the ovens in times of plague

It is no pleasure to burn.

To watch the flesh blister and melt into grease, to render down bones into charred dust—it is no pleasure, the oily smoke, and stench—rising on the air above the sickened city—

But then there are too many for his ovens, and they go other places—left where they fall, wrapped in rough sackcloth, collected—dumped—floating debris in the river—they bloat and gas in the air, then go slimy and putrid, and finally sink into the grime, their essences staining the cobbles.

He continues on, offloading the whale oil and hooking it up to his ovens, seeing the lambence drain away into the hot flame, which sends the souls away.

They float away on air, and it is as it should be, not bobbing in the riverwater or settling into the dust around them. Lesser beings, the natural philosophers write, it is all very well for them to slowly decay. They are of this foul earth, and to this foul earth they return into the filth that birthed them. But men—they are _higher_ —they have brought down Leviathans and built unto the skies and tamed the wild world—so they _ought_ to go higher when they die—to soar on greasy smoke and have their ashes scattered to the wind, to float on the back of dreams and eternity.

The plague has turned the rightful ways of this world upside down.

The bodies keep coming, even as his whale oil supplies run low. _He_ doesn't get sick, even as the essence of the plague fills his lungs so many times each day, with every freed soul.

He doesn't wonder why.

All he knows is that someone has to do this, and it might as well be him. When his employers sicken and die, when he burns them and all possibility of his future away, he never thinks of leaving.

In this time of trouble, someone has to tend the ovens.

The dead deserve that much.

He never asks if he deserves something better.


End file.
